Obama wants to compete with Alexandre the great!S1000+
Doomed to Repeat History in Afghanistan?
Friday 27 February 2009» by: Joe Galloway, McClatchy Newspapers
Obama announces Iraq withdrawal plan at Camp Lejune, NC. (Photo: Getty
Images)
President Barack Obama this week is laying out the road home from the
war in Iraq during the next 19 months. More or less.
The President has indicated that he'll order the withdrawal of upward of
100,000 American troops from a war that began six years ago and has cost
us more than 4,200 American dead, well over 70,000 wounded or injured
and nearly a trillion dollars in national treasure.
This withdrawal, however, will leave tens of thousands of U.S. troops in
Iraq to train and advise Iraqi security forces, safeguard American
facilities and personnel and continue tracking down and eliminating the
worst al Qaida in Iraq terrorists.
The president and the generals in command are operating against an Iraqi
deadline of 2012 for the removal of all American troops from the country
as dictated in the status of forces agreement negotiated between
Washington and Baghdad late last year.
It's time - past time - to begin a major drawdown of U.S. forces in a
war that was begun on false pretenses with little foresight or planning
and a rosy forecast of a swift victory and an even swifter withdrawal by
the summer of 2003.
The nation we set out to free from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein and
visit with the blessings of democracy has paid a hellish price for its
salvation: Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been slaughtered in
civil war and ethnic cleansing, and as collateral damage in the war.
Millions more have been forced from their homes and turned into refugees
abroad and displaced persons inside their own country.
If there's no peace in Iraq, there is, at least, a silence of sorts and
a greatly reduced death toll, both for American troops and for Iraqi
civilians.
We can only hope for our own sake that it'll hold for the coming 19
months and, for the sake of the Iraqis, for much longer than that.
Now we wait to hear how many of the American troops leaving Iraq will be
retrained and recycled into a potentially disastrous war in Afghanistan
that's dragged on even longer, by a year and a half.
The president has ordered three brigades of U.S. combat troops, plus
additional support troops - a total of 17,000 soldiers and Marines - to
reinforce the 30,000 Americans already in Afghanistan.
The American commander on the ground in Afghanistan, Army Gen. David
McKiernan, had sought more than 30,000 troops for an Afghan surge, but
he was given just over half that number as the Obama administration and
the Pentagon study several reviews of U.S. strategy and tactics in that
struggle.
Even though Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the Pentagon have scaled
back the Bush administration's lip service to lofty goals such as
victory and a democratically elected national government in Afghanistan
as the war grows more deadly and dangerous, even that may not be enough
of a row back for the Obama people.
The focus is, and ought to be, on neighboring Pakistan, and on how
Washington can help steady a shaky new government there that's besieged
by homegrown and imported terrorists and by an economic meltdown in a
place that already had had plenty of both before the global recession
made itself felt.
The new administration wants to know what the end game and the exit
strategy will be in Afghanistan before it doubles down on additional
forces and commits billions of dollars more in aid for nation building
and rebuilding.
The previous administration was seemingly happy to declare Mission
Accomplished in Afghanistan after toppling the Taliban government and
then starving the necessary conflict there of manpower, machinery and
money to focus on its elective war in Iraq. During the long period of
neglect, both the Taliban and al Qaida went to work rebuilding in their
hideaways across the border in Pakistan's wild frontier provinces.
The Taliban insurgents now have a chokehold on as much as 70 percent of
Afghanistan, and they're proving to be flexible and adaptive in their
attacks on American, NATO and Afghan forces.
If the new American team has some new ideas about how to succeed in
Afghanistan, now would be the time to lay them out. Nothing that
Alexander the Great, Queen Victoria or Leonid Brezhnev tried in their
attempts to subdue the quarrelsome Afghan tribes worked, and nothing
we've tried in the last eight years has, either.
While we're waiting for a new strategy, perhaps we should break out some
old Kipling:
"When wounded and left on Afghanistan's plain
"And the women come out to cut up your remains ...."
Etc., etc.
»
IN ACCORDANCE WITH TITLE 17 U.S.C. SECTION
107, THIS MATERIAL IS DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PROFIT TO THOSE WHO HAVE
EXPRESSED A PRIOR INTEREST IN RECEIVING THE INCLUDED INFORMATION FOR
RESEARCH AND EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES. TRUTHOUT HAS NO AFFILIATION
WHATSOEVER WITH THE ORIGINATOR OF THIS ARTICLE NOR IS TRUTHOUT ENDORSED
OR SPONSORED BY THE ORIGINATOR.
"VIEW SOURCE ARTICLE" LINKS
ARE PROVIDED AS A CONVENIENCE TO OUR READERS AND ALLOW FOR VERIFICATION
OF AUTHENTICITY. HOWEVER, AS ORIGINATING PAGES ARE OFTEN UPDATED BY
THEIR ORIGINATING HOST SITES, THE VERSIONS POSTED ON TO MAY NOT MATCH
THE VERSIONS OUR READERS VIEW WHEN CLICKING THE "VIEW SOURCE ARTICLE"
LINKS.
http://www.truthout.org/022809Z
=======
S1000+
=======
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"World-thread" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected]
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
[email protected]
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/world-thread?hl=en
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
